Legislators Hispanics

Lawmakers from the Eastside of Los Angeles are threatening to use the state budget to withhold $6 million in health care money for Los Angeles County unless supervisors reverse themselves and agree to build a larger replacement for County-USC Medical Center. The Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 last year to approve a smaller and less costly 600-bed replacement for the earthquake-damaged public hospital.

When the weather was hot in her La Puente neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s, state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente) remembers the sweet stench coming off the nearby Puente Hills landfill. State Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) recalls the black freeway dust that settled on the laundry hanging from clotheslines in her East Los Angeles backyard. When her family moved to Huntington Park, she recalled, they endured the smell of animal rendering plants in nearby Vernon.

When the weather was hot in her La Puente neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s, state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente) remembers the sweet stench coming off the nearby Puente Hills landfill. State Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) recalls the black freeway dust that settled on the laundry hanging from clotheslines in her East Los Angeles backyard. When her family moved to Huntington Park, she recalled, they endured the smell of animal rendering plants in nearby Vernon.

Lawmakers from the Eastside of Los Angeles are threatening to use the state budget to withhold $6 million in health care money for Los Angeles County unless supervisors reverse themselves and agree to build a larger replacement for County-USC Medical Center. The Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 last year to approve a smaller and less costly 600-bed replacement for the earthquake-damaged public hospital.